Who is Percy Jackson?
by SocratesOfAthens
Summary: Set after the Giant War. The seven Nico and Reyna independently reflect on who the son of Poseidon really is, and a problem he helped them overcome. I will update this at least every week until its done. Rated T for some swearing, mentions of mature problems, suicide, eating disorders et cetera.


LEO POV.

Leo: Suicide.

During the quest, Leo thought of Percy Jackson as a powerful and scary demigod, and not much else. He had been mean to Leo after the Ballistae incident and Leo didn't talk with him much, so it just stayed awkward between them. Leo didn't see why everyone was such a big fan of this guy. He didn't have the look of a leader, like Jason. He wasn't a strategic genius, like Annabeth. He was just a fighter, a great fighter at that, but a foot soldier. Maybe even the equivalent of a hundred foot soldiers, but excellent swordfighters came and went, ultimately not very memorable. Leo had no idea why he was the unofficial leader of Camp Half Blood, and he was definitely lost as to how Percy became praetor with a single week of being at Camp Jupiter. He wondered what made him so special.

Leo had considered him a swordsman, and not much else. One day, Leo saw what everyone else did in the enigmatic son of Poseidon.

Leo felt like crap. The revenge goddess's words haunted him just as much as his mother did these days. He was a seventh wheel. He had nobody to turn to. He would never see Calypso again, and only had a fireproof shirt to remember her by. Piper and Jason don't stay at Camp Half Blood year round, and Jason spends most of his times at Camp Jupiter in the summer anyways. And wherever Jason is, Beauty Queen's never far away. Hazel and Frank lived at Camp Jupiter year round, together. Percy and Annabeth lived in Manhattan going to school. They came to camp on weekends, but at this point, they were basically celebrities, and never really had time to talk to Leo. Everyone, and Leo meant everyone, demigods, naiads, dryads, nymph's of every kind all wanted to meet the three time saviors of Olympus. Leo saved the world once, he had sacrificed himself completely, and only alive currently because he made a little automaton to pour the physicians cure on whatever was left of Leo's body. Nobody really treated him like a hero though, and his sacrifice didn't seem so brave anymore because he had come back alive. Leo should be dead, having exploded into pieces in a battle with Gaea's essence. A fact an Italian son of Hades routinely reminded him of.

Even Nico was viewed as more of a hero. He had come in clutch twice now, once in the Titan War, rallying an undead army and his father to fight for Olympus, once more when he brought the Athena Parthenos to Camp Half Blood with Reyna and Coach Hedge. Leo wondered why he was the seventh wheel, why it had to be he that always didn't fit in. Hades wasn't even an Olympian, but everyone accepted Nico.

Leo figured he was forgotten and treated poorly because of the way he looked. Leo didn't look like a hero. He looked like a hero's charity case. He supposed he could thank his dad for that. Leo's mother was beautiful, but his father was so ugly that Hera threw him off Mount Olympus as a baby.

Everyone else on the Argo II was stunning.

Annabeth's features were sharp, she had an athletic physique, honey blonde princess curls loosely framing the sides of her face, and her eyes were an intimidating, stormy grey. She looked like the epitome of a hero.

Piper was the daughter of the beauty goddess, and she was so pretty that she tried to make herself look ugly, with bad haircuts, no makeup, et cetera, but she couldn't help herself, she was just attractive from any and every angle.

Hazel was still changing, only being what, fourteen or fifteen, but still looked amazing. A petite body beginning to curve in all the right places, a heart shaped face, a cute button nose, wavy brown hair and brilliant golden eyes.

Leo could entertain the notion that he only thought they were this hot because he was a lonely and hormonal teen, except for the fact that he also thought that the guys were attractive. Leo wasn't gay, he was pretty sure, but just like he knew Narcissus was attractive, he knew his guy shipmates were too.

Jason. Being a son of the king of the gods, he had a powerful aura that practically screamed, 'I am your leader.' Jason had broad shoulders, a strong chest, the abs of a battle hardened veteran, had prominent cheekbones, close cropped blond hair, and wore Imperial Gold glasses framing his shockingly electric blue eyes.

Frank. At first, Leo thought Frank looked weird, then one day he came back a good three inches taller, his baby fat gone, his hair shaved into a buzz cut, looking like a massive football player. Frank looked like he had dark Asian eyes at first glance, but they were speckled with a sanguine red as a part of his heritage to Pylos.

Nico. His aura of death made Leo want to crawl into Bunker 9 and never come out. He was around Leo's height. He was skinny and pale from spending so much time in the underworld. He had ink black hair, and to call his eyes black would be an understatement. His eyes were darker than obsidian, just a dark void one could stare in forever.

Percy. Leo remembered hearing Piper remark that Percy looked cute in a scruffy way. Leo thought Piper was blind. Frank and Hazel thought he was an Olympian god when they first saw him. The way he held Juno in his arms bridal style, summoning waves to drown the gorgons following him. He was physically invincible at that time too. He had a jawline that could cut into Celestial Bronze, a crooked grin that made any girl's heart flutter, and untamable raven hair. Goddesses had crushes on him. He was lean, lithe, and muscular like a panther. His sea-green eyes were otherworldly. They were the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen. Annabeth told him Percy was one of the first sons of Poseidon in eons to inherit Poseidon's true eye colour. He blew Leo out of the water, figuratively and sometimes literally.

Leo wished he had Percy's eyes, or Jason's body. Just some form of an attractive or redeemable quality. Maybe then he would be acknowledged as a hero. Instead, he had pointed ears, an elfish grin, was short, had curly dark hair, and boring brown eyes.

Leo had been absentmindedly fiddling with scraps of metal in his hand for a while now, and he looked to see what he had created. It was a gun, a small nine millimeter handgun. It would do the job just fine, Leo supposed. He stared at it, wondering what he should do with it. He thought of shooting himself in the head right there in the Hephaestus cabin, but he wasn't going to let his siblings find his bleeding body, in the cursed cabin bed Leo was in. Beckendorf had slept in that bed, he was dead. Leo slept in it, and he was soon to be, he thought. He would kill himself in a place where he hoped they would never find his body, but also a place where he would feel happy about ending it all. He twirled the gun on his finger, before putting it in his tool belt. He couldn't let anybody see the gun and get some funny ideas. He walked out, looking at the sky, a calm, cerulean blue, the grass was green, Satyrs were playing the pipes over at the strawberry fields, campers all around, sparring, rock climbing, playing volleyball, even just sitting under the trees and talking. It was nice.

It was a nice day, the twenty-eighth of July. Leo felt that this date had some significance, but he couldn't remember what it was. It couldn't be too important if he didn't remember it, he figured, and kept walking.

He was at the entrance of the forest, and spotted an eagle flying overhead. Odd, seeing as those mostly stayed at the Roman Camp, but Leo wasn't in the mood to sit and think about all these things. He was just exhausted, and wanted it to be over with. Leo was hurting and angry, and his friends, because of his use of humor to cover it up, overlooked it. He was already ignored as if he didn't exist, and so he was just going the extra step to make it so that he really did not exist in the land of the living anymore. Leo thought of what his legacy would be, thinking it would be cool to be remembered as a savior of the world, but thought it was more likely he wouldn't be remembered at all.

Still, Leo had some pretty cool experiences in his sixteen years of life, he remembered visiting Asclepius, making the Valdezinator for Apollo, riding on the back of Festus, the grand unveiling of the Argo II, taking Gaea into the sky and exploding her, and best of all, meeting Calypso.

Those were just his memories as a demigod though, Leo treasured his memories of tapping 'I love you' to his mother every day in Morse code. He remembered her laugh, the way she would hold him, tell him stories, and the way she showered him in unconditional love.

It made Leo realize something that hit him like a ton of bricks. Leo hadn't had anyone love and care for him since he was eight and his mother died. Which Leo felt was his fault too. Leo was so alone, so utterly alone it hurt. Percy had Annabeth. Frank had Hazel. Jason had Piper. Leo had nobody. Nobody loved him. He was a seventh wheel. Leo choked back a sob, his strides becoming quicker. His mother loved him, he knew, and he could hug her and tell her he loved her in Morse code as many times as he wanted to.

When he died, Leo wanted to be close to what he loved. He neared the Bunker 9 entrance, and a few feet left to it, he used his magical tool belt to pull out a shovel. He put up a concealing blanket over the space he was going to be operating in, so no tree spirits would interrupt him. Bunker 9 felt like home, and he deemed it an appropriate resting place. Leo meant it when he said he didn't want anyone to have to find his dead body. He started to build a contraption that would bury him. He began to dig, a small rectangular grave first, when the hole was a little taller than Leo, he stopped. He pulled a chainsaw from the tool belt, and cursed, knowing the belt would need a few minutes before he could use it again. He used the saw to cut a tree down. He used a branch to form a pole, it was rough at the edges, but he didn't feel like sanding it down, it wouldn't be used by anyone else anyways. He stuck the pole into the front of the grave he built. Next he made a thick wooden plank out of the tree. Then he used the remaining tree and made all sorts of different pieces without any sort of function. Leo attached the wooden plank he made to the top of the pole. He took the dirt he dug up and placed it on top of the wooden plank. The trap was set.

Leo would lean forward, shoot himself in the head, and his dead body would collide with the pole, and so the plank on top of the pole would shift and dump the dirt over the grave. Leo would be buried successfully, and the wooden plank would sit on top of the grave, making sure the dirt didn't move with the wind. Out of fear people might discover his body under this wooden plank, he made a bunch of fake planks all around bunker 9 so people would just think it a mess and move on. It was perfect, his contraption was simple, and elegant, just the way Leo liked his machinery. He reached into his tool belt, and was supposed to get his gun, but instead, he found a pen and a notepad.

His tool belt was telling him to write a suicide note. Leo took the pad, knowing he couldn't get his gun without granting the stupid belt's wishes. When he was about to die, Leo figured he should be the guy getting wishes granted, not granting a magic belt's. Leo didn't write anything on the notepad. He drew a blueprint. A six wheeled car, a beautiful, efficient, and powerful vehicle, with all sorts of bells and whistles. In the bottom corner of the notepad, he drew a lone wheel, to represent himself. He signed it, Leo Valdez, Son of Esperana Valdez, and stuck it on the bunker nine door. He didn't add Hephaestus on purpose. He briefly debated whether he should take off the belt or leave it on, and Leo decided he would take it off. Someone else should be able to use it.

Leo was finally ready to commit suicide. He approached the grave, and pulled out his nine-millimeter handgun. He leaned forward, and pressed the gun tightly to his temple. He shut his eyes tight. He hated clichés, but he couldn't help but think, _'Goodbye, cruel world.'_ As his last thoughts before he put his finger to the trigger. He slowly applied pressure, bracing himself for impact.

Suddenly, hundreds of nails sprang out of the tool belt, and formed a message on the ground. Leo momentarily loosened his grip on the pistol.

THE BEST DECISIONS ARE MADE AT DAYBREAK

HEPHAESTUS

He wondered if his tool belt was talking to him, but he soon realized that it was his dad sending me a message. Leo hated his dad. He tapped the gun to his chin, in thought. He hated thinking about his dad, how he had left Leo with nothing, never talked to him, made him a fire user, made him a demigod, made him… the seventh wheel. Leo's mom was the popular one, the favourite in their family and was a beautiful woman, by anyone's standards. His dad got thrown off a mountain for being ugly. People didn't care about him, nobody worshipped the god of mechanics. Leo felt that his dad gave him everything he didn't like, except his height, the one thing Leo got from his mom that he wished he didn't.

Leo grabbed wrench from the toolbelt, and threw it at the message, scattering it, grumbling,

"Suck my lug nuts Hephaestus; if you don't want me to do this, then you're going to have to pry the gun straight from my hands." Leo knew he was being disrespectful, referring to his dad by his real name, but he couldn't bring himself to verbalize the word 'dad'. A dad was supposed to be there. He couldn't even refer to him as his biological father, because technically gods don't have DNA. Leo realized it was maybe a little more disrespectful that he told his god dad to suck his lug nuts than the fact that he referred to him by his name. To Tartarus with it all.

Leo didn't want to wait a miserable 8 hours. He walked back to his spot, picked up the gun, and held it back up, feeling the cool metal pulse against his warm head. He waited a second to see if his sorry excuse for a biological father had any more nail notes. He didn't.

He did however, hear a voice in his head. ' _Such misery. Please don't die. You are wonderful, so devoid of happiness, and so full of grief.'_

"Gaea?" He asked, but he quickly realized that it wasn't her voice. It was someone else's, but it sounded just as mean.

She cackled. _'No, I am Akhlys, primordial goddess of misery, poisons and the Death Mist.'_

Gun still pressed to his head, he asked, "Are you the one responsible for my misery?"

' _Alas, no. I wish I could have done this to you, but no. I am only able to speak to you because your misery was so intense it called me.'_ Her voice was so sad, it made Leo remember what he was supposed to be doing.

Once she said no, Leo pulled the trigger, but the bullet turned wispy and passed harmlessly through him. Something clicked in Leo's head, Annabeth told him about her encounter with this goddess in Tartarus.

"Percy beat you right?" Leo asked.

' _Yes, but only because I had no idea of the full extent of his abilities, and unwittingly gave him an advantage. I understand that they would not have told you how the fight unraveled.'_

"Nobody tells me anything, if we're being honest." He admitted.

' _Athena's daughter was terrified. The son of Poseidon is strong, the strongest in the history of the Earth. You have always viewed him as superior, but you two are identical in a few key ways. He too wallows in misery.'_ Leo thought that it was weird for Misery to say other people were wallowing in her.

"Don't you hate him? Why are you getting a suicidal kid to sympathize with someone?" Asked Leo, his sadness temporarily replaced by intrigue.

' _I don't care who you sympathize with, I'm just getting my revenge on the son of Poseidon, causing him as much misery as I can. I was simply stalling until, now. Goodbye'_

Leo took a deep breath, steeled his nerve, flipped the safety off, and looked at the moon one last time. He was about to kill himself when he noticed someone was sprinting towards him. "What the fuck do you think you're doing? Put that shit down, NOW!" It was Percy.

Leo took the gun from off his head. "I wasn't going to do it." He laughed weakly, twirling the handgun on his fingers, lighting it on fire.

He turned to face Percy, who stared at him in shock. "Why?" Asked Percy. He didn't care for Leo's obvious lie.

As Leo stared into the sea green eyes that he had been jealous of, he saw something he never saw before. His eyes reminded Leo of shattered glass, so vulnerable, raw, and sad. His eyes held more sorrow than Nico's, and Leo could literally see people dying in Nico's eyes if he stared long enough. His eyes told the story of a man who had lost his ability to laugh, lost his hope, until there was nothing left but misery.

"I… I don't belong here." Leo choked out.

"Talk to me about that." Percy was surprisingly calm, now that Leo didn't have a gun to his head.

"Nobody cares about me. I don't have friends. I'll never see the people I care about ever again. I'm tired of being alone. I'm tired of being the seventh wheel. I miss my mother, and I want to touch her, see her, hug her again, but I can't until I'm dead. I have no family. I am homeless outside of camp. I don't have place in the mortal world just as much as I don't in the demigod world. I hate my dad, for making me a demigod. I hate how horrible of a parent my dad is. I hate how he gave me this." He lit himself on fire so bright Percy could see his skull. "I'll never see Calypso again. Festus is dead, and his circuits so fried he'd be a shell of his former self. I love you guys, but the pros of staying alive are outweighed by the cons."

Percy considered this. "I know how you're feeling." Leo noticed that Percy didn't comment on whether the statements were true or not, and took it as Percy's admission of guilt that Leo was a seventh wheel.

Leo interrupted him with a snort, "No you don't."

Percy didn't seem fazed, "I do. You don't know the half of it. You don't even know the tip of the iceberg." Leo almost laughed. Almost.

Percy Jackson, the celebrity, was saying he related to being neglected and unloved. Was saying he related to missing his family. Percy had a loving mother, stepfather, little sister, girlfriend, and was treated better than most minor gods. What did he know about being alone? He voiced his thoughts, not bothering to try and keep the resentment out of his voice.

"You have everything buddy. Girlfriend. Mother. Stepfather. Baby sister. Respect. Adoration. You don't know shit from beans about being alone okay? You've never slept in sewers to escape the cold. You don't know what it's like to have nobody tell you that they love you for eight years. So don't come at me with this bull, save it for someone who believes you."

Percy's eyes softened, "You're right. Right now, everything looks picture perfect. It wasn't always this way, and during those times, I felt exactly like how you described."

"Let's say I believe you. Tell me about it, then." Said Leo, "Akhlys visited me while I had the gun to my head, and told me that we were the same in a few key ways. She said there is much that you hide, and she stalled me from killing myself until you came, so you could watch and be miserable."

Percy paled, "Look Leo, we can talk about my issues later, but right now, I think yours are a little more pressing. I want to strike a deal with you."

"I'm listening." Said Leo.

"I can't make you love life, no matter how hard I might try, so I just have to buy some time. Wait until daybreak." Asked Percy, Leo thought it was odd that Percy said the same time as his dad.

"What do I get out of it?" Asked Leo.

"A wise man that you behave just like once told me that daybreak is the best time for decisions."

Leo scoffed, "I do not act like Hephaestus."

Percy shrugged, "Today is our one year anniversary of defeating Gaea. Remember some of the good stuff, for me eh?"

Leo nodded. Percy continued, "You are my friend, and as much as I want to force you and bring you back to the Hephaestus cabin alive, I won't. You are a man Leo, I can't control you, if at daybreak, and I trust you to wait until daybreak, you still want to end it, then fine." Percy handed Leo a pistol.

Leo was stunned, he knew he could build one, but it was a heartwarming show of faith.

Percy put his hands on Leo's shoulder and looked him in the eyes, and Leo squirmed under his gaze. "You've had a hard life, Leo. But know this, the harder it is now, the better it'll be in the future." Percy walked off, and looked back when he was a little ways away. "Leo!" He called. "If you choose to live, I'll be there for you to help work through your issues. As long as I'm living, I promise."

Leo began to process all of what just happened. He would remember the good times in his life, try to have faith that good things were coming until daybreak, and then he would make his decision.

Leo didn't have to wait until daybreak. He burned the desert eagle at around four in the morning having made his decision, and the son of Poseidon was grinning like a lunatic when he saw Leo at breakfast the next day.

Percy never mentioned it again, or treated Leo any different, which was appreciated very much. It was as if it had never happened. What he did do however, is tell some Leo centric stories at the campfire, and started a monthly meetup between the kids from the prophecy of seven plus Nico, Reyna and Coach Hedge if they could make it.

Leo knew why Percy was the leader of camp half blood and became the leader of Camp Jupiter within a week. Percy Jackson was an amazing fighter, but it was his compassion that set him apart. People would follow Percy through hell and back, because they know all Percy does for them is what he thinks is for the best. He never did get to ask about what Akhlys said, how Percy was wallowing in misery. But seeing him chomp down blue pizza with blue cookies and wash it down with blue coke, laughing about a hairbrush with Rachel, Leo thought he was fine. Leo felt like he knew who the son of Poseidon was. He was stubborn and impulsive, but he also had a heart of gold, and was a strong, loyal, brave, compassionate, and great guy.

-LINEBREAK-

This story is going to continue with the rest of the 7 saying of a time when they got to know who Percy was. I'll add Nico and Reyna if you guys want. Annabeth will be the penultimate and Percy will be last. This will be nine chapters long if I include Nico and Reyna. I don't know if the next ones will be quite this long. Piper is next, I've already started writing hers, its about a thousand words currently.

ALSO: I found a long piece of work I made when I was like 13 about Percy being abused, should I post? Its written, but I'd have to correct the grammar errors in it.

Leave a review guessing why Percy was in the woods. I gave a bunch of hints, but I had never outright said it.


End file.
